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I was in the record business from the 70s through the early 2000s, and oversaw the transition from LPs to CDs. I had a huge LP collection (50% classical), which I transitioned to a huge CD collection, and got rid of most of the LPs. I still have the entire collection.
CDs were the better format by a long ways, but I totally understand why people love vinyl. For one thing, the large format cover. I remember working for a classical record label, and we were looking at the final cover proof of the last LP we were releasing before going all CD, a particularly beautiful photo of the Alps, and my boss saying "Aren't you going to miss the big cover art?" And all of us nodded solemnly. It really felt like a funeral, like I was saying goodbye.
I also remember wondering how people were going to clean their weed, and roll proper joints without an LP with a gatefold cover.
Properly keeping a vinyl collection is a chore. First of all, if you are doing it right, ALL of your LPs are in a poly sleeve for protection, so the process for playing an LP is this:
Remove the album from the shelf, where it is properly stored upright and tight.
Remove the LP from the poly sleeve
Remove the inner sleeve/ dust cover from the cover.
Remove the LP from the inner sleeve/ dust cover, carefully using fingertips on the edges and label only.
Hold the LP, and look at it from the edge, to see if there are any obvious warps or kinks. Of course there aren't, you store it properly, but you look anyway.
You blow off any obvious hairs or dust.
Set it carefully on the turntable, trying to put the spindle through hole on the first try, without rubbing it around, making nearly invisible, but bothersome, marks around the hole, that will irk you every time you see them.
Carefully clean the surface with a Discwasher or some other cleaning device.
Use a stylus brush on the needle to remove any schmutz.
Carefully place the needle on the surface, and relax for the next 20 minutes as you listen to your music. Or dance. Or my personal favorite: Air Guitar (I play for real, I'm allowed).
Flip the record, repeat the entire cleaning process, and drop the needle.
Reverse the process, put the LP back into the inner sleeve, put that in the cover, put the album back in the poly sleeve, and slip it back into its proper place on the shelf.
That's a lot more complicated than simply dropping a CD into a drawer and pushing a button.
The psychological result of all those steps, EVERY time you want to play music, is that it starts to feel like a ritual, and takes on a feeling of importance. The music you listen to, the LPs that that you fuss over, that you preserve, and collect, take on a personal and cultural significance, that you feel a need to protect.
As new formats came along, CDs, then Digital Downloads, the ritual was removed, and music stopped feeling important. In the 60s and 70s, music was a significant factor in ending the Vietnam War, but it is hard to imagine today's music industry mobilizing against the government. Most people don't take their music as seriously as they did back then.
Yet some have rediscovered the satisfaction in having such a strong, PHYSICAL relationship with their music collection, and are collecting LPs again.
I get it. Music has ALWAYS been important to me, so I don't need the ritual to remind me anymore anymore, or maybe doing the ritual 100,000 when I was young wove it into my DNA. Either way, CDs have the durability, combined with the punchier sound quality, ease of use, and longer duration, and I was hooked the first time I saw one. I'll take the advantages of the CD over The Ritual any day.
I am so grateful to see someone write it out like this in ritual sense so that someone who didn’t have any records would understand. It’s downright reverent of the music. Thank you for that.
Very true. Many hobbies have rituals. Cyclists assemble their gear, clean their chain, and choose their wardrobe before their ride. Card collectors and collectors of all kinds of things often have detailed ritualistic organization of their collection. Potheads might pack and burn their bowl the exact same super optimized way every time. Gardeners might walk meditative paths and talk to their plants. Those descriptions are outside observations of people and their hobby rituals that anyone can make. OP has given us an inside look into their hobby, which is pretty damn cool and insightful!
Reverence is the perfect word for how performing the ritual makes you feel about the music.
What's your favorite purely classical LP to air guitar to
Andres Segovia playing Bach's Partita #3 for Solo Violin. I heard it first when I was a teen, and now I'm trying to learn it on electric guitar, as an oldster.
My family had discwasher but not needle cleaner. You are supposed to use it EVERY time???
My Discwasher came with a little stylus cleaning brush that fit over the top of the little bottle of cleaning solution.
You probably didn't have to clean it every time, but it wasn't a bad idea to give it a quick swipe and remove any grit that accumulated from the last playing.
I have and use vinyls, but I use them differently.
I don't keep a collection and they're not rare or expensive. They cost next to nothing in second hand stores when I buy the odd "greatest hits" and mixed artist records that have no collectible value.
I use them with no regard to their longevity - I consume them. I play them on a cheap record player with a less than ideal needle or speakers, well aware that they will wear down and become useless over time. I don't care. I don't believe in the need to preserve everything that is old only due to it being old. I'll leave that for the museums. I don't run a museum.
I do it because I like the part of the ritual where you actually just listen to records and hear all the songs that are on there without having to make a choice or change tracks all the time.
A lot of records only have one or two hit songs. The rest is stuff I'd never choose to search for, and is never played on the radio. These are the tracks I like to hear, because I would not be exposed to them otherwise.